Suit Charging Racketeering In Public Housing Dismissed

Suit Charging Racketeering In Public Housing Dismissed

July 20, 1991|By WILLIAM HATHAWAY; Courant Staff Writer

A U.S. District Court judge has dismissed a racketeering suit that charged a prominent Hartford housing consultant and a federal housing official with conspiring to monopolize publicly financed housing in the Hartford area.

Two developers, Thomas V. McLaughlin of New Haven and Joseph Gall of Chesire, had charged that Arthur T. Anderson, a consultant for Capitol Housing Finance Corp., and David Harrity, who worked in the Hartford office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, tried to force them to abandon plans to rehabilitate a low-income housing development in Hartford's North End.

U.S. District Judge Ellen Bree Burns of New Haven, who dismissed the suit before trial in a decision dated Wednesday, wrote that the plaintiffs provided "scarcely more than naked assertions in support of their claim of a conspiracy."

The charges prompted a federal grand jury investigation into the case, but no evidence of criminal activity was found, sources have said.

The plaintiffs in the civil suit contended that Anderson and Harrity, along with a Hartford architectural firm, tried to strong-arm McLaughlin and Gall into accepting Harold Rothstein of Greater Hartford Realty Management Corp. as a partner in the Winter/Green Elmer project. Then the defendents tried to force them out of the deal, charged the developers when they announced the suit at a 1989 press conference handled by a New York public relations firm.

The plaintiffs had sought $55 million in damages.

Anderson had no comment on the decision, but his lawyer David Rosengren called the ruling "just."

Rosengren termed the developers' charges "vexatious and frivolous." He would not say whether Anderson would take legal action against McLaughlin and Gall.

The plaintiffs' attorney, Alan Friedman, said he would appeal the dismissal, and he expressed confidence that his clients would eventually win the case.

The decision was the second court victory in recent months for Anderson, whose company, Imagineers Inc., also runs the city's

federal rental subsidy program. In March, a federal judge dismissed a suit that alleged Anderson conspired with city officials to deny the subsidy contract to another company, Hartconn Associates. Hartconn has also appealed the dismissal.